If I could wave a wand and reverse just one government policy it would be the expansion of so-called ‘smart motorways’ in the face of what seems the iron determination of the Department for Transport to press ahead with them. These are motorways where the hard shoulder is incorporated into the motorway to create an extra lane – a loss supposedly compensated for with periodic refuges for breakdowns. If you wondered why stretches of the M4 are shut most weekends for works, this is what they are doing. The consequences of such supposed ‘improvements’ can be lethal.
The latest evidence comes from a Sheffield inquest, where the coroner, David Urpeth, ruled that two people who were mown down by a lorry on the M1 after stopping to exchange details following an accident were unlawfully killed. While he said that the primary cause of death had been the carelessness of the lorry driver, the lack of a hard shoulder had ‘contributed to this tragedy’.
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